Organizing Kids Art Supplies – Store in baskets inside an ottoman

Call me crazy, but my kids aren’t allowed to have their art supplies in their bedrooms. At ages 5- and 2-years-old I think I’d find some artwork in places that would require elbow grease on my part – and even a possible new paint job. So we avoid that all together and store all our kids art supplies in an old ottoman in the family area.

The ottoman is an older one, so I don’t care if it gets marks on it and we put three small wicker baskets inside to keep coloring books, stickers, crayons and all other crafty supplies.

I had previously stored these supplies in a plastic drawer unit like this one. But it was hard to keep it organized, hard for my daughter to manage the drawers and I disliked seeing the clutter through the clear drawers. The ottoman has been a great alternative! Easy to organize and out of site, out of mind.

*Keep in mind that ottomans that you use caution when using ottomans or toy boxes with hinges where fingers can get caught! My kids aren’t allowed to close the ottoman by themselves. They can open it and take supplies out – but at clean up time, they wait for me to close it.

I just recently did a major Clutter to Clean project, you can see how I organized these areas in my house:

Comments

I don’t let my daughter have her art supplies in her room either. It’s either do them at the dining table or not at all, and they absolutely must be picked up when they’re done being played with, or the House Fairy takes them for her kids to play with. Never had a problem, not once, with stickers in the wrong place or marker marks on the walls, desk, floor, whatever.